


Scar Tissue

by boleynhowards



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boleynhowards/pseuds/boleynhowards
Summary: Katherine Howard confronts her past.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 70





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: graphic imagery of scars, implied sexual assault, beheading

A thick band of redness circled her neck, one that, when uncovered, was impossible to tear your eyes from. Katherine stared at her reflection in the mirror, slowly bringing her hand up and trailing her fingers over the rough skin. The vicious markings were a constant reminder of what had happened to her previously - a permanent memoir of her gruesome execution.

It was true that she could hide it. In fact, she almost always did. Placed lazily on the side of the sink in front of her was a black choker, studded with bright pink diamonds and with a heavy ‘K’ charm hanging off the front of it. It had been one of the first gifts she had received from her cousin. She had somehow managed to find a company who custom made the accessories and ordered loads in for them both so they wouldn’t have to keep adorning high collared sweaters and turtlenecks. Katherine was grateful for the gesture and almost never took the choker off. This time was just one of the few exceptions.

Brown eyes swept over the mangled dark cicatrix and behind them, memories began to play around her mind like a home screening of her past; the scar the cassette tape and her eyes the screen. She envisioned the boat that had driven her to the Tower after her arrest, almost feeling the bobbing of the water and hearing the forceful splashing of the oars. In her mind’s eye, she could see the severed and rotting heads of Dereham and Culpeper, decapitated and stuck on spikes at the entrance of Traitor’s Gate, punished for their involvement with her. Briefly, Katherine wondered that if they had come back also, they would bear similar grotesque scars on their necks. That would be a real connection, she bitterly realised before quickly perishing the thought.

Her daydream continued and in her mind she could see her cell, dimly lit in the nighttime by a flickering wax candle which had long since expired its wick but had never been replaced. Whispers of her last ever order sunk uncomfortably against her eardrums, the demand that she ‘dispose of her soul and prepare for death’ pounding at her skull like a migraine. The block had been brought to her upon request shortly after that, and Katherine could feel the cold and unforgiving wood against her skin as she prepared for the next morning the more she let it linger in her thoughts.

Then came the impending morning. Conjurations of the scaffold and the block materialised in front of her, a crowd of bloodthirsty ambassadors and pitiful townspeople appearing in her peripheral vision. Her heart suddenly began to race as she was assisted upon the scaffold, and, with all the firmness she could muster, she finally spoke.

“I merit a hundred deaths for so offending the King who has so graciously treated me.” The hushed words escaped her lips both in her dreamlike state and in reality. Finally, she rested her head forward on the block and clenched her eyes closed, waiting for the worst. Waiting for that one stroke of the executioner’s axe that marked her end, that tore her from the living and threw her into the realm of the dead.

Only it never came. Katherine hastily tore her eyes open just as the blade was about to meet her neck, and suddenly she was back in the bathroom. There was no crowd, no scaffold, no block and no axe. Just herself, the mirror and the scar on the neck; the memento of her dreams and the reminder of their realness.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and blotchy with the tears of her past, and Katherine almost expected herself to cry her own spilt blood from centuries ago rather than real tears. Sniffling, she entered a staring contest with herself and clutched her shaky hands on each side of the sink, grappling so hard that her knuckles whitened and yet not caring; she had to pull her attention away from that scar and return from the depths of her nightmares.

Eventually, she managed to steady her own breathing and calm the rate of her pounding heart. It was getting easier for her to soothe herself the more and more she reflected on these memories, and Katherine would be lying if she said she wasn’t a little proud of herself for reaching this stage of being able to confront her past. Don’t get her wrong, it was still painful; her anxieties crept up whenever she faced her history and her neck uncomfortably burned for a few hours afterwards but she was learning to manage it without overloading herself and launching into a full panic attack. She could face these daunting memories and swallow them whole without clawing at her neck and tearing open old wounds with even older traumas. That was progress.

When she was confident she could handle it again, she let her eyes drift down to the scar once more. Only this time she just curiously pondered. She wondered why this piece of her old life carried over into the new one and what her body would look like if every single scar she got back then came back too. If red handprints remained permanently emblazoned over her hips and torso and the bloodied divots of desperate fingernails were pressed into her back and shoulder blades, would Katherine be able to calmly confront her reflection like she could now? Probably not.

Even the scars she got in this new life came and went. Unlike the one tainting her neck, the scabs she had got when she fell and scraped her knees in the garden or the blisters that bubbled when she burnt her hands trying to make hot chocolate had faded into an almost invisible whiteness. Not her axe scar though. The only time that had ever changed shape from its messy jaggedness or colour from its deep crimson was when it got more enflamed than usual on a bad day.

That revelation had prompted Katherine to scour the internet for possible reasons, though, as expected, she didn’t find anything too encapsulating or informative. The closest she found was an excerpt from a medical newsletter that read, ‘ _When a person has an injury, the body responds by repairing the damaged tissue, which creates scar tissue. This is the sign of the body healing - a layer of protection for the future.’_

Katherine had read on to see if anything else matched her situation. She learnt the names of different types of scars - keloid, hypertrophic, contracture - but none of their descriptions could be paired with the injury of her own. That was only to be expected, Katherine supposed, considering that she only knew of one other person in existence who had a scar from a previous life that had literally killed her, only to reappear on her current body. Hoping to receive a helpful result was really just wishful thinking.

Still, she followed some of the advice on the article anyway. Evidence of that was the tub of imiquimod that sat abandoned at the back of the medicine cabinet - she had read that it was treated on scars but, when she tried it on her own, it had been ineffective. Pressing ice against the wound and waiting for the pain to go away when it came around would just have to do.

Before she could carry on investigating over the scar for the millionth time, a call from downstairs pulled Katherine from her train of curious thoughts and right back into reality, much like how the single stroke of an axe had done minutes previously. (Only this time, she wasn’t crying.)

“Kat! Do you wanna come with me to the shop? I’ll buy you something if you do!”

A small smile finally tugged on her lips at the bribery, and she called back, “I’ll be down in a minute!”

She sent her reflection one last gaze and lingered over her scar one more time before she grabbed the choker and clasped it again around her neck. It looked like she hadn’t even taken it off, which was the desired effect.

Taking the opportunity to tighten her ponytail whilst she was at the mirror, Katherine checked over her appearance and then was soon downstairs, waiting at the door whilst her cousin tried to bribe the fourth queen into coming too. She chuckled at the conversation she could overhear, the two bartering over how much chocolate Anne would owe Anna if she were to join them.

Her family, the queens, were always going to be that extra blanket of protection, for if she had walked out of that bathroom unable to face her past, her eyes pouring with petrified tears and her mouth contorting with pained screams, she knew that they would be there. She knew that, even though she was slowly beginning to support herself in this world, they always were going to have her back regardless.

Her scar tissue.


End file.
